


Gutterbaby

by punkascas (earlwyn)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Always Female Dean, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mute Castiel, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pining, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5335670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlwyn/pseuds/punkascas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas, both homeless teenagers and friends from their first group home as children, reconnect after Cas is sent to juvenile detention following a drug bust. Written for the Non-Sexual Acts of Intimacy prompts on Tumblr: one falling asleep with their head in the other’s lap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gutterbaby

**Author's Note:**

> For the [Non-Sexual Acts of Intimacy prompts](http://punkascas.tumblr.com/post/134143786291/nonsexual-acts-of-intimacy-select-from-the): _♗:One falling asleep with their head in the other’s lap._ Cas is 17; Dean is around 16.

Grody and cragged, the bridge when Cas finally finds it is one of the old concrete railroad overpasses, all arches and rust. It slopes into the browned grass on one side, where the new glass and platinum high rises of bankers and judges sinks into the rot and wood houses of the innermost residential area of the city. A trash fire burns corrosive yellow-orange from one of the cans beneath one arch. The night pulls long shadows over his eyes as the same time the wind tugs at the cowl of his hood, but Castiel detects the cadences of ten or twelve different voices chatting and gossiping. He passes a boy near his age wrapped in the black plastic of a trash bag for warmth, hears him laugh to his friends as Castiel stomps passed: “Hey, look it’s the dummy! Hey, dummy!”

Castiel ignores them. They think because he won’t talk that he can’t hear and that renders them the idiots.

A group of children huddle in a circle around the fire, a central figure with the popped collar of an oversized leather jacket their leader. Dean never wears her father’s jacket unless she’s thinking of running. Castiel guesses that’s why he didn’t find Dean back at the home. He wonders how many nights she’s spent on the street while he counted the days and the cinderblocks in his cell at the detention center.

At least she’s faced towards him. He snaps his fingers above his head, the sharp sound capturing those green eyes, and then smiles, chin tucked into the zip of his hoodie, and signs  _[hello]_. Four months, three days, and six hours since he last saw Dean and now there she is.

Dean eyes him for a second and then turns back to her discussion with the group. A third of the group are older teenagers like them, but the majority of it are children, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Too young to be out on the street. Too young to know how to survive, especially in winter. Dean has her calling.

And that means Castiel must wait.

Finding a patch of cold concrete to lean against, he burrows his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and props a foot back against the wall. A few feet from him, two thin-skinned adults with scraggly hair stand close together, sharing a packet of cigarettes. They look like crackheads, or maybe meth addicts. He should give them Gabriel’s card. Whatever Ellen said about his eighteenth birthday creeping closer, and the likelihood of his next arrest sending him to the penitentiary next time, drugs are the most lucrative opportunity for someone with no address, no education, and few prospects. Yes, Castiel could enter therapy for his speech issues like Ellen suggested, and he could find himself some shitty part-time job, and he could live in a home or a shelter until he managed to pull himself out of the gutter. But the gutter was the place that took him when he was finally hauled from his uncle’s basement at nine years old. The gutter is what he knows. And the gutter has Dean.

Snapping his fingers again, he manages to catch the methheads attention. He mines a request for a smoke. Despite Ellen’s concerns, communicating with others has never been an issue when he actually wants to. They scowl at him, tell him to fuck off, but he soon silences their objections when he flashes two shiny quarters proffered between his fingers. Ellen gave him the money for the bus, out of her own measly public defender salary, but walking is free and money is scarce. It’s better used for instances like this. Fifty cents, with Gabriel’s card sandwiched between the coins, assures Castiel of two new commissions and a cigarette. He ducks his head close to accept a light from the woman and then touches his fingers to his chin in thanks. They probably don’t know sign language, but that’s all right.

Castiel doesn’t really know sign language either. He knows two handfuls of vocabulary from ASL, but the language his hands create is a pidgin dialect of his own design. Dean is the only other fluent speaker, having helped Castiel invent it during those long, far away nights they used to lie grasping for each other on that mattress on the floor, the scars around Castiel’s throat still fresh and Dean’s nightmares keeping him awake with the sound of her sobs and the fresh, wet patches seeping across the mattress. Dean didn’t stop wetting the bed until she was twelve, but she made Castiel keep it a secret even then, eight years old and already too proud to ask for help.

It takes another forty minutes for Dean to finish her conversation. Castiel smokes, and leans, and waits. The protection of the arch does little to steel against the cold. They’ll need to sleep body to body tonight, if they don’t want to freeze to death. Rolling her shoulders up and scowling like something about it all irritates her, Dean stalks over to him, green eyes bright in the firelight and hard with accusation.

“Why the hell are you here, Cas?”

 _[Looking for you]_ , he signs back, gestures short and sharp. If Dean’s going to be a bitch, he can be a bitch right back.  _[I got out today. I had court today.]_

Dean scoffs, chin jerking up in an abbreviated nod. Like that’s news to her. Like she forgot.

 _[You weren’t at the home]_ , Castiel signs again.  _[Chuck said you went for a walk. Two weeks ago.]_  He punctuates the time difference with an eyebrow.

“Yeah, well.” Dean’s shoulders hunch higher under her too large coat. Despite its material, its size forbids insulation, hanging off her frame. “I had business.” What that could mean, Castiel doesn’t know. Usually the more cryptic Dean is, the less well it bodes. “And it’s not like you were around anyway.”

She throws it down between them like a gauntlet. When Castiel tilts his head to the side in atonement, Dean jerks her eyes away. He knows she misses him when he’s arrested and serving time, even if she dislikes to admit it.

He touches two soft fingers to her chin, requesting her attention. Dean flinches from him at first, but her eyes follow his fingers as he forms his hand into a lowercase d and nudges it against his cheek twice, a one-two tap. Dean swallows and Castiel smiles, private and pleased, and draws the length of his index finger against her cheek, finishing the greeting. That sign only belongs to her, a secret for just them, the only name Castiel gave someone.

 _[Hello, Dean]_ , it says.

Dean blows out a growling breath. “You’re such a dick,” she grumbles, but there’s a hint of a wry smile there. Castiel grins back, and then Dean is stepping into his arms, her coat falling open around both of them, her head tucking perfect against his neck. “Hey, Cas,” she whispers, breath puffing across his collar bone. Her fingers press hard circles into his back, five up and five down his spine. “You get community service this time round? Or did they let you off with time served?”

He taps twice against the small of her back to signify the second one. Dean huffs. “Figures. They’d rather let you rot in there than actually  _do_  something.”

Wrapped up close like this, it’s impossible for him to sign to her. But these are the moments Castiel will never regret his lack of speech. Growing warm with Dean pressed all against his front are the times everything feels perfect for once, the small indents of scars left around Castiel’s neck and Dean’s leather jacket meaning nothing. Nothing can touch them when they’re together like this. Dean lights up every cell in his body, leaving him still inside and content, right on the precipice of something electric and exciting.

Dean always pulls away before he can find out what it is. “Did you eat?” she asks, grabbing his hand and leading him back to a lower section of bridge, where someone laid out cardboard and a few ragged sleeping bags to protect from the cold ground.

 _[Sandwich]_ , he signs one handed, when she glances back at him for the answer.  _[Chuck. Cheese.]_ He hand-spells both words. Dean’s palm against his is warm and dry, and she braided their pinkies together on accident, by habit. It makes a heat he can’t recognize rise to his cheeks.

“Cheese sandwich. Got it,” Dean says, giving him a funny look. Castiel smiles back at her, lopsided, flustered, and Dean knocks with a soft laugh against his side. “You’re such a dork. Why does Meg think you’re cool?”

Meg kissed him once at Gabriel’s apartment, when Dean was in the bedroom with another boy. He didn’t like it.

 _[You think I’m cool]_ , he signs, when Dean releases his hand to spread out one of the sleeping bags, zipping it up to a second and making space for two.  _[You think I’m hot.]_

The teasing feels daring, summons big winged birds to flap wildly in Castiel’s stomach. But Dean just laughs at him. “Where did you get that from? I know cells in juvie ain't co-ed.” Dean leers at him, and at first Castiel doesn’t understand, and then realizes Dean is implying he interacted with the other boys like this.

But it’s just Dean. It’s always been just Dean.

 _[I don’t know.]_  He throws in a shrug on top of it and ignores the low swoop of disappointment in his chest. He’d like if Dean thought he was–hot. Attractive. He thinks Dean is beautiful.

Tugging off her boots and throwing them into the bottom of the sleeping bag for safekeeping, she slides her legs through the layers of blue and green plastic, and then pats the ground next to her. Castiel repeats the actions with his shoes, and then sits where Dean suggested. Their socked feet brush against each other in the recesses of the sleeping bag. Castiel nuzzles his toes into the bottom of Dean’s foot, tilting his head and lifting one corner of his mouth in question.

“We got to sleep like this tonight,” Dean says, looking everywhere but him, as if Castiel hadn’t surmised that yet. “Together. It’s too cold otherwise.”

Castiel leans into her shoulder for comfort, unsure what discomfort’s weighing on Dean but wanting to ease it. Then he slips farther into the bag, and pillows his head in the valley between her thighs, staring up at her. They can sleep like this. He wants to. He’s happy to.

Dean stares down at him for a long moment, eyes wide with surprise, and then her mouth curls in a taunting smile. Her fingers skate under his hood, pushing it off, and then trail, gentle and affectionate, through the strands of his hair. “Oh, so you think that’s how it’s going to be,” Dean needles. “You think I’m just going to sit here and let you use me as your pillow all night?”

That wasn’t his intention but now that Dean’s suggested it, he finds he wants little else. Closing his eyes, he raises his eyebrows at the same time, letting the blank, innocent expression speak for him. Dean flicks him in the ear, sharp, and huffs a laugh.

“Dick.”

But she doesn’t push his head away. Her fingers slip back into his hair, soothing. After the strain of walking all day, and the stress of court, and every single minute of those four months, three days, and six hours  _without_ , the perfection of once again being  _with Dean_  seeps into his bones like cement. He falls asleep between one breath and the next, waking only sometime later when Dean shifts them, sliding and shivering down into the bag next to him. The shell of her ear feels like ice against his lips when he tucks his mouth against her ear, breathing air hot and sweet over her cold skin, enfolding her body with his. With Dean snugged against him, he doesn’t know how to be cold. He doesn’t know how to be anything other than home.  


End file.
